The spread of Hindu Culture and Religion by Trade routes to far East (Not including Cambodia, Indonesia or Thailand

Across the Sahara, 2020

Since ancient times, goods have been transported from Africa's interior to the Mediterranean ports. For centuries, the economic life of the Mediterranean coast, from the Sahara to Sudan, was determined by a network of trade relations, which consisted of traditional trans-Saharan caravan trading. The flow of traffic crossed through all of former Libya. The traders had their collection points and loading terminals in the interior and on the coast; in this regard, the caravan cities of Ghadamis and Murzuq played a central role for a long time. Besides trade in goods and merchandise, thoughts and ideas were also exchanged within a cross-cultural network. Furthermore, merchants were the first to bring the light of Islam to inner Africa. Others have followed them such as scholars, diplomats, men of religion or plain travellers. Indeed, Islam was a creed that developed in an urban, mercantile setting. The diffusion of Islam throughout the population took many centuries. 1 Of the three large trans-Saharan routes, which rank among the oldest trunk roads in the world, two crossed present-day Libyan territory: originating from Tripoli, one eastern route ran via Murzuq and continued on the one hand into the Sokoto Caliphate and the Bornu Empire, both of which lie in present-day Northern Nigeria, and on the other hand to Kanem and to the Sultanate of Wadai in present-day Chad. This route marked the shortest path to Africa's interior, which has been used continuously since ancient times. It would become the main slave-trading route of the Sahara. The western route ran from Tripoli via Ghadamis to Ghat and from there on into Niger and to Mali. These routes are assumed to have been used regularly until the beginning of the twentieth century, even when political events, in Europe as well as in North Africa, significantly influenced caravan trading and subsequently also the intensity of the usage of the routes (Fig. 3.1).

2021

Since pre-historic times almost eight routes, starting from Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh, connected India with the Silk Route passing through Central Asia. The paper probes into the fascinating history of these routes.

The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2021: Official Conference Proceedings, 2021

The trade networks of the Silk Roads offered an impressive array of intellectual and cultural influences, which, through the exchange of knowledge and ideas, both verbal and written, still reverberate throughout our societal framework today. Science, arts and literature, textiles and technologies were shared and disseminated into societies along the lengths of these routes, and, through this exchange, languages, religions, and cultures developed and influenced one another. Our collaborative exhibition at the University of Southern California (USC) draws upon artifacts in our collections and those of partner institutions. This initiative includes two phases: First, working with faculty, staff, and students across USC departments, as well as external collaborators, we are focusing on written artifacts-the books, manuscripts, and other vehicles for nonverbal communication-that connected different Silk Roads communities and created entirely new cultures. Rather than impose chronological or historical divisions, the organization of our exhibition is based on geography. Visitors will walk through and view objects as they would travel along the Silk Roads. The aim is both to introduce visitors to specific peoples and places that mark the Eurasian land mass while at the same time preserving the sense of bewilderment that so many interlinked empires and ideas can cause for modern travelers. Secondly, a companion one-day event, Borrowed Recipes: Migrant Food Worlds of the Silk Roads, traces the hidden cultural exchanges underlying the foods originating along the Silk Roads and widely available to us in Los Angeles today.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2025

This study investigates the importance of interregional mobility along the Eastern Silk Roads during the Mongol period, highlighting the interconnectedness of postal and pilgrim networks in eastern Central Asia, with a particular focus on mid-fourteenth-century changes in the multifaceted dynamics of overland mobility under Mongol rule. By referencing an extensive corpus of Old Uyghur and Middle Mongolian administrative texts, as well as pilgrim inscriptions, the research provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the Mongol administration and the postal system within it, and how they were connected with pilgrim activities. The article uncovers insights into how mobility patterns changed over time. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of the geographical aspects of these networks reveals enduring links between the Eastern Tianshan Region and the Gansu Corridor, whilst also underlining the expansion of pilgrim networks during the Mongol period. The research also explores the societal implications of these mobility networks, highlighting the importance of religious affiliation and social status in overland mobility. This comprehensive analysis illuminates the Eastern Silk Roads and presents a unique perspective on the interplay of political, religious, and socioeconomic factors that shaped the history of the region during Mongol rule.

ARCHITECTURE MONUMENTS AND URBANISM: Cultural Networks and Sea Ports on the Maritime Silk Routes, 2025

Route(s)” describes a network of loosely interconnected long-distance seaborne navigation routes that linked Asia to Arabia, Europe, East Africa, and beyond. In narrative style, this introduction provides key information about the Maritime Silk Routes since the first stirrings about 2,000 years ago. In so doing, it reviews the archaeological remains of ancient ships that ploughed the waves, moving people, goods, information, ideas, customs, traditions, technologies, and architectural materials from port to port. It also examines architectural, iconographic and textual evidence of those ports, their harbours, the urbanised port towns and cities that sprang up around them, and the interconnected maritime networks which facilitated their growth. Finally, it describes the cultural monuments and architectural masterpieces erected by the diverse Maritime Silk Route communities to honour, amongst others, the deities that protected those who braved the waves. These monumental masterpieces bore witness to the centuries-long intercultural communication that fostered maritime cultural exchange, mutual learning among nations, and a shared understanding and respect of among Maritime Silk Route peoples and cultures, which gave rise to some of the world’s greatest civilisations and their enduring legacies that have shaped our world today.

The Early Historic period of South Asia (c. 3rd century BC to 4th century AD) was marked by the resurgence of urbanism, the growth of Buddhist monastic centers, and the development of overland and maritime trade routes. This paper examines the dominant role of local trade patterns from the perspective of towns and cities, and how those local trade networks contributed to the eventual transfer of long-distance goods.

2021

This paper was presented at the workshop “Goods, Languages, and Cultures along the Silk Road” at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, October 18 and 19, 2019. While many contributions to the workshop focused on recent developments in China’s current “New Silk Road” politics, on forms of communication, and on contemporary exchange of goods and ideas across so-called Silk Road countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia and with China, this short essay focuses on the history of the so-called Silk Road as an important transport connection. Although what is now called the “Silk Road” was not a pure East-West binary in antiquity but rather developed into a network that also led to the South and North, the focus here will be on describing the East-West connection. I will start with a few brief remarks on the origins of the connection referred to as the Silk Road and will then introduce the different great empires that shaped this connection between antiquity and the Middle Ages through mil...

Historians tend to become anxious over the issue of transliteration. In a book such as this one that draws on primary sources written in different languages, it is not possible to have a consistent rule on proper names. Names like João and Ivan are left in their original forms, while Fernando and Nikolai are not and become Ferdinand and Nicholas. As a matter of personal preference, I use Genghis Khan, Trotsky, Gaddafi and Teheran even though other renditions might be more accurate; on the other hand, I avoid western alternatives for Beijing and Guangzhou. Places whose names change are particularly difficult. I refer to the great city on the Bosporus as Constantinople up to the end of the First World War, at which point I switch to Istanbul; I refer to Persia until the country's formal change of name to Iran in 1935. I ask for forbearance from the reader who demands consistency. Other great centres of civilisation such as Babylon, Nineveh, Uruk and Akkad in Mesopotamia were famed for their grandeur and architectural innovation. One Chinese geographer, meanwhile, writing more than two millennia ago, noted that the inhabitants of Bactria, centred on the Oxus river and now located in northern Afghanistan, were legendary negotiators and traders; its capital city was home to a market where a huge range of products were bought and sold, carried from far and wide. 7 This region is where the world's great religions burst into life, where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism jostled with each other. It is the cauldron where language groups competed, where Indo-European, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan tongues wagged alongside those speaking Altaic, Turkic and Caucasian. This is where great empires rose and fell, where the after-effects of clashes between cultures and rivals were felt thousands of miles away. Standing here opened up new ways to view the past and showed a world that was profoundly interconnected, where what happened on one continent had an impact on another, where the after-shocks of what happened on the steppes of Central Asia could be felt in North Africa, where events in Baghdad resonated in Scandinavia, where discoveries in the Americas altered the prices of goods in China and led to a surge in demand in the horse markets of northern India. These tremors were carried along a network that fans out in every direction, master calligraphic specimens that have been observed have all been on tinted paper'. 11 Places whose names are all but forgotten once dominated, such as Merv, described by one tenth-century geographer as a 'delightful, fine, elegant, brilliant, extensive and pleasant city', and 'the mother of the world'; or Rayy, not far from modern Teheran, which to another writer around the same time was so glorious as to be considered 'the bridegroom of the earth' and the world's 'most beautiful creation'. 12 Dotted across the spine of Asia, these cities were strung like pearls, linking the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Urban centres spurred each other on, with rivalry between rulers and elites prompting ever more ambitious architecture and spectacular monuments. Libraries, places of worship, churches and observatories of immense scale and cultural influence dotted the region, connecting Constantinople to Damascus, Isfahan, Samarkand, Kabul and Kashgar. Cities such as these became home to brilliant scholars who advanced the frontiers of their subjects. The names of only a small handful are familiar today-men like Ibn Sīnā, better known as Avicenna, al-Bīrūnī and al-Khwārizmi-giants in the fields of astronomy and medicine; but there were many more besides. For centuries before the early modern era, the intellectual centres of excellence of the world, the Oxfords and Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand. There was good reason why the cultures, cities and peoples who lived along the Silk Roads developed and advanced: as they traded and exchanged ideas, they learnt and borrowed from each other, stimulating further advances in philosophy, the sciences, language and religion. Progress was essential, as one of the rulers of the kingdom of Zhao in northeastern China at one extremity of Asia more than 2,000 years ago knew all too well. 'A talent for following the ways of yesterday', declared King Wu-ling in 307 BC, 'is not sufficient to improve the world of today.' 13 Leaders in the past understood how important it was to keep up with the times. The mantle of progress shifted, however, in the early modern period as a result of two great maritime expeditions that took place at the end of the fifteenth century. In the course of six years in the 1490s, the foundations were laid for a major disruption to the rhythm of long-established systems of exchange. First Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, paving the way for two great land masses that were hitherto untouched to connect to Europe and beyond; then, just a few years later, Vasco da Gama successfully navigated the southern tip of Africa, sailing on to India, opening new sea routes in the process. The Worcester College, Oxford April 2015 in the supply of animals, and especially fine horses. But the nomads could be the cause of disaster, such as when Cyrus the Great, the architect of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BC, was killed trying to subjugate the Scythians; his head was then carried around in a skin filled with blood, said one writer, so that the thirst for power that had inspired him could now be quenched. 9 Nevertheless, this was a rare setback that did not stall Persia's expansion. Greek commanders looked east with a combination of fear and respect, seeking to learn from the Persians' tactics on the battlefield and to adopt their technology. Authors like Aeschylus used successes against the Persians as a way of celebrating military prowess and of demonstrating the favour of the gods, commemorating heroic resistance to the attempted invasions of Greece in epic plays and literature. 10 'I have come to Greece,' says Dionysus in the opening lines of the Bacchae, from the 'fabulously wealthy East', a place where Persia's plains are bathed in sunshine, where Bactria's towns are protected by walls, and where beautifully constructed towers look out over coastal regions. Asia and the East were the lands that Dionysus 'set dancing' with the divine mysteries long before those of the Greeks. 11 None was a keener student of such works than Alexander of Macedon. When he took the throne in 336 BC following the assassination of his father, the brilliant King Philip, there was no question about which direction the young general would head in his search for glory. Not for a moment did he look to Europe, which offered nothing at all: no cities, no culture, no prestige, no reward. For Alexander, as for all ancient Greeks, culture, ideas and opportunities-as well as threats-came from the east. It was no surprise that his gaze fell on the greatest power of antiquity: Persia. After dislodging the Persian governors of Egypt in a lightning strike in 331 BC, Alexander set off for an all-out assault on the empire's heartlands. The decisive confrontation took place later in 331 on the dusty plains of Gaugamela, near the modern town of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he inflicted a spectacular defeat on the vastly superior Persian army under the command of Darius III-perhaps because he was fully refreshed after a good night's sleep: according to Plutarch, Alexander insisted on resting before engaging the enemy, sleeping so deeply that his concerned commanders had to shake him awake. Dressing in his favoured outfit, he put on a fine helmet, so polished that 'it was as bright as the most refined silver', grasped a trusted sword in his right hand and led his troops to a crushing victory that opened the gates of an empire. 12 the impressions of the cultural superiority brought from the Mediterranean. The Greeks in Asia were widely credited in India, for example, for their skill in the sciences: 'they are barbarians', says the text known as the Gārgī Samhitā, 'yet the science of astronomy originated with them and for this they must be reverenced like gods'. 29 According to Plutarch, Alexander made sure that Greek theology was taught as far away as India, with the result that the gods of Olympus were revered across Asia. Young men in Persia and beyond were brought up reading Homer and 'chanting the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides', while the Greek language was studied in the Indus valley. 30 This may be why it is possible that borrowings can be detected across great works of literature. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Mahābhārata, the great early Sanskrit epic, owes a debt to the Iliad and to the Odyssey, with the theme of the abduction of Lady Sita by Rāva a a direct echo of the elopement of Helen with Paris of Troy. Influences and inspiration flowed in the other direction too, with some scholars arguing that the Aeneid was in turn influenced by Indian texts. 31 Ideas, themes and stories coursed through the highways, spread by travellers, merchants and pilgrims: Alexander's conquests paved the way for the broadening of the minds of the populations of the lands he captured, as well as those on the periphery and beyond who came into contact with new ideas, new images and new concepts. Even cultures on the wild steppes were influenced, as is clear from the exquisite funerary objects buried alongside high-ranking figures found in the Tilya Tepe graves in northern Afghanistan which show artistic influences being drawn from Greece-as well as from Siberia, India and beyond. Luxury objects were traded into the nomad world, in return for livestock and horses, and on occasion as tribute paid in return for peace. 32 The linking up of the steppes into an interlocking and interconnecting world was accelerated by the growing ambitions of China. Under the Han dynasty (206...